Wednesday, August 27, 2008

OMFG #2






OMFG Clothed Figure 3 WITH CHUCK PYLE!!!

when i was digging through these, they were labeled under the reference folder. I was trying to remember who the frak did these drawings, then in the corner i noticed a signature and it was ME hahaha DUR DUR DUR DUR.

These were done back in 2003 in the good ole academy o' art COLLEGE!




CHECK THAT OUT! COLOR AND DESIGN WITH ALANA!!! FUGGIn' MANDALA! :D lol!

OMFG #1





OMFG

was organizing my external drive and RAN into a CRAPLOAD of old fan art drawings back in 2002 or somewhere rounds there!

HAHAHAHA FUGGIN' ANIME! and boy was i a PERV!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Returning to your roots

So ends another summer and a start of a new year for art students. For me, it's a fresh reminder that everyone has to return to their roots now and then - this means picking up the old sketchbook and going out and drawing from life. Whatever happend to those days of yore when you're drawing every moment you get?

Do any of you guys remember those days? We would all be sketching - ALL the time. I would sit in at borders just doodling, and out comes another sketch buddy, who would sit down next to me and we would just draw the people there. We would sketch till the sun drops - a 3 to 6 hour session. "Pencil Mileage"

We all tout the "We draw 100 hours a week! Every Week!" - sure sounds like B.S., but I can definitely say we did just that. We would draw from 8 am till 12 am, and then some more on the weekends! After getting outta the academy, I tried my best to keep up with sketching from life.

It's hard to find time and keep that motivation in check. What really helps me is carrying a small 3x5 moleskin notebook. These are a godsend! I try to sketch when i sit down, but as of late, it's been dragging.

I know for some of you, you guys keep it up easily (GRANT! you jerk!) - I'm just glad to be able to do it when I get the chance. I feel like if I dont sketch from life at all in a day, a little piece of me dies. Hmmm... at this rate, I shoulda been dead long ago :D

So today was nice, where I got a second to actually sit down with the wife, and we both pulled out our sketchbooks and went at it. It's nice to go back to our roots and just doodle. Maybe we can make a zoo run one of these days!?! That would be awesome!


if anyone cares to know, I carry no pencil sharpener with me. I draw with a 6B pencil, not sharp. It's a giant super dull 'nubby end. Makes it fun to do these quick 2-3 minute sketches like what you see above. at the same token, since it isnt sharp, it's hard to lift the pencil and draw accurately, so most of the time i'm just dragging it around until it makes a shape. loads of fun!

Friday, August 01, 2008

SpaceMovers Art


So Space Movers finally launched today and is racking up the daily active users on facebook. I worked with a couple awesome people, one namely a Shaun Pendergast (monkeyspin.blogspot.com) in creating this neato game with neato characters. Along with the help of Mr. Game Designer Marc Wilhelm and the rest of the design team at SGN, we all outputted something we are proud of.

There are lots of characters to pick from, with individual powerups to play on. It's a nice simple addicting game that I hope most people enjoy (I hope people like the designs more!)...

Shaun mainly handled all the awesome art assets and UI design and layout of most if not all the pages.

I handled the first pass mockups and character designs.

There's a lot more designs, so if you're interested, you can check out the game on faceBook. I can't remember the UrL off the top of my head and I'm a bit lazy to look for it... :D

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Fluffy!!!!




Sorry for the long delays!!!

I recently found new work with a company called SGN, providing artwork for the facebook applications and games. I am thoroughly surprised at this thing we call "the Internet," and "facebook."

I didnt know there was that much money invested in it? that's crazy!!!!

Anyways, hope to be posting more soon. This is a fluffy little girl i made a month ago. Am looking for more opportunity to doodle and sketch! Picked up that mass effect book so i'm totally stoked about doing sci-fi art :D

Thursday, April 03, 2008

WTF? Let's Elf it up byyaaaaatttch!

Yeah that's right foo' - it's an ELF with BIG FUGGIN' ears! Yeah? say what? THAT'S RiGHT foo' - she got some BIG fuggin gloves on too! Those damn elven man hands!

mmmmm yeaaah, yummy! and she's like "Hey, is that elven bread i smell? *SNIFF* SNIFF* Mmm mmmM mmm"

now she pull her sword out, and she gonna get some o' dat bread! YEAAAAAH Das right! Cast lvl 1 magic missile! MMM yeaahh, now she can nibble some o' dat! yeah... nibble away at that you crazy elf b****!

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Valkryie Grayed up!


being uncomfortable with just a line drawing, i grayscaled up the valkyrie a bit!

she just didnt look finished standing next to the other two.

Yay chicks in armor!


wooooo!!!!!!!!!

I R have blast draw chicks in armor!

So i have a 4th chick in armor not posted, but i was thinking - welp i have one barbarian chick, i got one valkyrie, and i got one that is sorta goth'ish so i says she is the Sinister warrior. with the forth one she's like a pirate ... sorta....

so i was thinking, warrior of the north, south east and west... the valkyrie protector of all goodiness, the goth chick lives like in a volcano castle or something... the barbarion in the forest... and the pirate chick is in line at the optometrist because she's lost stereo vision.



ehhh ok i include 4th warrior here. I didnt include her to begin with cuz she wasnt that great - i dont like her much. She kinda like a chinese mongorian "gole damn schitty wall" pirate chick:

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Welp, time to put that port together.


YUP!

Rough times, and i dont blame my company for any of it. this sorta thing happens and all you can really do is look up and hope for the best.

Hate the big L-O... but what can you do?

here's a piece i was working on today.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Diggin' through the old 'bin!




rummagin' around the old bin looking for some additional portfolio material and i ran across a couple old norman rockwell studies! WOW these were large pastel studies i found just lyin' about on my hard drive :)

no new drawings as of now :( been mostly retouching old ones most have seen... man... i was a lazy ass back in the day. Look at all those nonsolid blacks!

***IT LOOKS SO GOOD SHRUNKEN DOWN OMG! i'm gonna print stamp sizes of these!***

Friday, February 22, 2008

This lecture is great. thank you randy pausch

A university professor is giving his last speech because he is dying from cancer. It is a great lecture, 1 hour long.

this lecture for me hits close to home.

I'm watching this very slowly - it's an hour long, so i'm gonna take my time to really listen to the lecture.

it is really interesting. My parents have pushed me since childhoold to be a doctor. I had zero control of my life. Everytime i picked up a pencil and tried to draw, they would rip my drawings to shreds - said it was evil and a waste of ftime. i was miserable.

Eventually i got a degree in biology and chemistry and went to optometry school for a year. I have always thought "if i die tomorrow, what would i change right now?"

so I quit optometry school, and rather than going home, tried to make my dreams come true and left to art school. I got completely disowned and financially cut off.

Currently, i'm happily married and 5 years in the industry as a concept artist. heck, my stuff is on TV. Never been happier. my dreams are there

for those who are interested in changing their life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Kudos to Grant!

Kudos to you buddy!

patty found your name in this article! :D

http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=49822&mode=thread&order=0

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Sketch Fever!!!!









So i finally get a free day to doodle some... and thought it would be a hoot to do some sci-fi illustrations/drawings. You cannot imagine how hard it was for me to get back into the groove of things. I guess that's partially my fault for not keeping up with it. I'm so used to the everyday tasks at work and constantly doing the same style all the time.

my first sketch came up as a large blobular head with the nose pointing one way and the eyes the other. Bummer! Welp, select-all, and DELETE DELETE DELETE.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Sketches!!!! Bus :?







I've fallen into a rut since xmas. I've been sketching a bit less, posting even less art, and have been hooked on Halo books :)

Some good came of it though: I've mailed Eric Nylund, writer of the Halo series books and writer for Microsoft Studios (writes story bibles and backstories for many games) and he wrote back to me very quickly! said thanks for the kind words but also said "Great job on Lucy!"

that's cool, i said nothing about lucy so that was nice.

Also i got a surprise email from a colleague WAAAAAAY back in 1st year of optometry school. He's a doctor now, and mentioned that he had to wake his wife up when he saw my name in the credits.

Thanks my friend! meant a great deal to me and is a big booster for my morale in this hectic world of "dog eat dog" art world.

These are the sketches i've done in the past week or so. Thanks Piya for posting on my blog, pushing me to post some art :)

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Nick Stohlman

... is the greatiness...

of greatness...

http://nicholasstohlman.com/

i hope i get free games now!

Monday, January 14, 2008

concept reel

here's a work reel that contains most of my work. it's a company reel so there are 2 or 3 images from other artists, but it's mostly my work in here. I wish i could seperate it out somehow.

reel

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Being married...




... is the next best thing that's happened to me since transformers :)

happy new year!

Thursday, December 06, 2007

First time 3D modeling w/ Z


Fluid's going into some downtime now with the holidays coming up, so it gave me some chance to monkey around a bit with Zbrush.

It was pretty fun :) i started monkeying with a sphere and sculpted this old guy's head out of it. 1st 3D model ever! It took like 2 hours, so i'm looking forwarding to spending more time and seeing how well things are if i spend more time on it. Hoping to learn more about zBrush - right now i'm only fluent with using it for texturing :( maybe a little bit about displacement maps but we havent found a use for Disp Maps with any of the projects currently going on.

Sorry for the lack of updates :( with things around the office, at home, and a new xBox 360, finding time to post anything worthwhile is proving difficult :P

Thursday, October 11, 2007

My typical illustration process

Everyone has their own process, but a majority follows the same basic formula that is pretty much engrained in most of us either from a natural progression or formal training.

I'm taking an illustration i've done at work as an example. The fundemental process is a no brainer: Thumbs -> rough or polished work -> color roughs -> final

The current illustration i'm using as an example is for a development project years ago. The simple art direction was to take heroes and villains and put them in a Rockwell like thanksgiving pose. It wasn't hard to find reference as this particular painting from Norman Rockwell has been spoofed numerous times for comics.



I first started out with same basic roughs, trying to get what each character is doing or how to make the composition flow better. I find myself usually detailing up the roughs i really like, while others i tend to just jot down quick info to see if that composition worked. I even tried to see if the composition could work horizontally in a landscape. I found myself leaning towards the lower right design the most, and once it was approved, went in to detailing it more.



Some artists can skip the detailing stage and go straight into painting. I find myself needing the extra detail, otherwise i just get stuck painting. Once detailed, i normally go through a black and white value study (here is done slightly in pencil) and color roughs, exploring different pallettes.



Because the original art direction was "spoof much as possible," i didnt do too much color roughs and went straight into color. On the left panel, you will see me splashing in quick color just to get an idea of general/local color. The progression after that is just me working into the painting on a single layer - literally painting it up (I dont do this anymore, as i'm finding more often than naught that people always wants changes last minute. Now a days, I use quite a few layers to make my job easier in the long run). I start detailing and rendering like mad trying to get to the final look.



The final touches ( logos, text, etc...) are added after finish - and there you go! a finished illustration that suits the needs of the client and fulfilled art direction clearly. Overall, i enjoy this process because it's predictable and systematic - i can easily gauge the time required to do a finished piece and how polished it can be. Rarely do i jump in and do an illustration straight up; more times i find that way leads me to go back and do some arduos fixes.

anyways, this piece is now a large poster hanging in our office :)

Monday, October 08, 2007

We're Sober!






OHHHHH how funny it is. I totally thought we were sober. Here's some pictures of Patty (the assistant director), Me, and Loren Bouchard (Ther person patty is assisting) at the Lucy Premiere party. I could have sworn we were sober? I could have sworn Loren was drunk? I guess we were wrong :( and Loren has the pictures to prove it :)